


The Morning After The Year After The Morning After

by foRon



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Graphic descriprion of Information Security Breach, Not Beta Read, Reunions, Work In Progress, all critics very welcome, be aware, could be abonded, especially grammar critics, first fic in my second language, juno steel is juno still
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 09:58:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13972614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foRon/pseuds/foRon
Summary: Peter took the job he found neither wellpaying nor interesting.There is something about poor employment choices that make ones live interesting, isn't it?UPD 28-03: old text was edited and new text was addes in first chapter, so now it doesn't end cold turkey, but have a nice cute sense of wholeness, which, i heard, was important in chapters.





	The Morning After The Year After The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> Please, make sure to read the tags.

They were sitting in the cafe, surrounded by loud talking and tableware clattering. Bright orbs of lights floating above them, casting multicolor shades everywhere.  
“I need you to get here,” she said, her slightly crooked nail circled an area on blueprints, “right at 6 pm. Stay here for a while, until I comm you.  
Then you could just go, money will be already at your bank account.”

Peter leaned on chairs back, watching girl sitting before him. Pretty one, but with clothes slightly unkempt. Unapologetic about this, which suited here probably better than neatest clothes would. Rebellious and young. Too young.  
Why would he agreed to such a job? Surely he had many other allies, all interchangeable, all easily shaken away and buried six feet under if need arise.  
Peter knew at least dozen and a half ways to kill a human that never even existed, that’s for sure.

The girl (potential client, really) was staring at him, waiting for an answer, and he should probably give her one, but there was just one problem to tack out before that.  
“You are aware,” he said, carefully rolling his r's, “that this is looking a bit like a trap.”  
And he would accept a trap so blatant in some of his others personas, but Stone was a hardened by the streets of metal and concrete cities, cities so sterile, nothing could survive it by anything but methodical through hard calculations.  
Which - was a tad boring.  
Her face turned sour.   
“Yeah,” girl replied. And didn’t add anything else, staring stubbornly at her blueprints as if it was somehow their fault.  
Which it kinda weren’t, by Peter opinion. Really it was Silver Stones fault by owning a debt, and Nureyevs by choosing to check what payment was.  
“Should I see myself out?” asked Peter, after a while.   
Whole situation looked ridiculous even for his own standards: mysterious e-mail from a friend of a friend of an old guise, strange payment negotiations with someone who used too much emojis and now this: sitting in the cafe across from teenager with greasy hair, feeling somehow like a creepy old man (and he never liked to feel old) and offended simultaneously.  
The funny thing? He didn’t even figure out how exactly she got him there. Peter did think high enough of himself, to be sure he would remember if he had owned something to a teenager.  
Scratch funny, it wasn’t a funny thing. It was an interesting one.  
“I need you to go there, with recording device on you,” girl started explaining slowly, unsure herself, while pulling another blueprint and placing it atop on the old one, carefully stabbing her fork through both, “because right above you would be a nice little computer, not connected to net, but connected to speakers. Which is very unprofessional of their cyber-security team, but very advantageous for me.”   
“And you believe that whatever it plays loud enough for device to record, wouldn’t alert security on the premises?”  
“Yeah,” her answer made Peter raise one of his inner brows. Silver Stone, his current alias, never raised a single brow in his live, never even moved a muscle on his handsome face, so all of the world’ve was missing out on Peters dramatical facial expressions for at least half an hour now. Girl continued her explanation, speeding up on technical bits, as if stabilizating herself on familiar territory, “Typical speakers can do up to 25 kilohertz, and human hearing ends at 20 or so. Animals could go bitta crazy, but malware also will turn one speaker into a microphone to abort operation if anything goes wrong, so I just. Need someone with good dictaphone close enough. Very close. Right,” she lifted one of blueprints and circled same as before,” here. Please?”  
That, admittedly sounded - ha! - a little less like trap. A little bit like magic, sure, but sound - ha! - enough that it could be true.  
Peter smiled proudly and internally at every pun. Silver Stone remained stonefaced (another smile for inner Peter) as lights moved above them, making their faces at little shades kaleidoscopes.   
Promised pay was good enough for this kind of work but not overtop high, which always was a good sign.  
Silver Stone was more of a kind for “important but boring” job, was even invented to work exactly that type of jobs. And he really didn’t had enough time to make enemies that could lie years in wake, waiting to strike.  
At least Peter didn’t think so.  
Job sounded boring, pay sounded not up to his standards, client was a young teen, who constantly used emojis as if it was 2100 again.  
“I take it,” Silver said. Girl handed him little shiny metal box immediately after.  
Paying this one debt sure as hell was easier than killing him, and Peter would get to keep his connections through Stone too, so why not.

So Silver was stupid, and job was stupid, and this entire region of space was stupid, and maybe Peter himself could be a little bit smarter. Not that he ever acknowledged that.  
Silver Stone was in the lobby of a nice hotel, not loitering per se, but waiting patiently. He already explained the whole situation to reception - he was a taxist; one of clients asked him to pick him up at evening; but he ended his other work early; his home was at the other end of the other town; could he wait there; thank you sir - and now he sat at the old sofa, trying not to paid attention to the unease in his stomach, while lazily googling funny pictures of birds.  
Birds were nice, and funny, and relaxing, and their little beaks were nice, and funny and relaxing, and their big beaks were that things too, sometimes, and Silver was having nice, and funny evening in a lobby of a random hotel.

He sat, and sat, until the doors burst opened and in flew an hurricane in coat and fedora hat.  
Which was unfair, because there was an unspoken arrangement between him and this hurricane: that Mars belonged to Juno, and the rest was for Peter to roam. Or, at least, Nureyev assumed, it was. He lately assumed some things wrong some of the times.  
And Juno was force of nature, not being restricted by any rules was his “thing” (also being overdramatic, but Peter could relate to this one, and overpessimistic, which Peter could understand, and just overall “over”, which Peter enjoyed at the time. But not having a clean set of rules were just unpragmatic in his view)  
So, the hurricane came and flew to register.  
Peter really wanted to go breathe some mildly polluted air right now, but the weight of recording device in his pocket was holding him still.  
“Oh,” he thought. “Oh, dear” and imaginary put his palms over his face. Recording device would record every sound he’d make, wouldn’t it?  
And his whole range of movement was watched closely by hotel cameras, which was not only why he couldn’t leave dictaphone there and hope nobody would notice, but also recording his every movement.  
He pulled his cabby cap lower, now covering all of his face with it.  
Oh, dear, indeed.

Steel was trying desperately to chat up a lobby boy on strange happenings at the town, but lobby boy was having none of it, and Juno, having all of it and some, was starting to look ready to burst. Or, which was more dangerous, starting to look for another victim of his questionable questioning techniques.  
In his head, while blending in the couch, Peter begun the count. The great count for seconds in which he would get exposed and?   
What exactly could he do, while pretending to be a man between two day jobs, so tired, he would fall asleep even sitting on the crappy lampy hotel couch?  
If he break the character, he would look to suspicious on cameras, but they wouldn’t have a face to match suspicion to. But there was another biometrics that could be searched for.  
“Hey, cabby!” rang the loud voice.  
If he break client trust, she would have his face, but no footage to analyse.  
“Want sleep for free, go sleep at home!”  
Peter dropped sketches from his pocket, while scattering to sit straight and awake.  
Juno eyes found his.  
Peter stood up to stretch his numb from sitting body.  
“Peter?” whispered Juno.  
Peters leg found its place on clumsily dropped sketches, ruining little metal box hidden underneath them. Stone squinted his eyes, “I’m sorry? Do I know you?”  
Juno exprections undergone several changes, too fast for Peter to grasp any of them, and then he realised hollow laugh, “no,” he said, “I guess not”.  
Silver looked him head-to-toe, to make sure he wasn’t some from his past, he just misremembered.  
He wasn’t of course. Juno Steel was never someone from his past. Someone from Rex past, yes, someone from Rose past, and someone special from Nureyev past.  
But not his.  
And then it hit Peter and Stone simultaneously, “oh! You must be waiting for taxi!”. “I’m so sorry, sir, so sorry”, Stone added, scrambling to pick his own mess from the floor, “I shouldn’t have slept on the job!”, he said, searching his wide pockets for anything resembling car keys, “i can’t believe i nearly missed you! Let me grab your bags, lets head to the car!”

Juno looked at him like he’d really rather get punched in the head.  
“Oh,” said Peter. “You don’t have ny bags with you, sir,” added Stone.  
Juno smirked, smile void of smiling.  
“I prefer to keep all of my baggage in”, he said, “lead the way”.

There was just one problem though. The car was right outside the hotel. And in the car was a very upset client and a very upset teenagee.  
And to make it worse they were the very same person.

**Author's Note:**

> For those, who reach the end: you all are my heroes, thank you!
> 
> I learned English mostly from fics and tv shows, never even talked to anyone for whom it was first language, so for all I know, it could be a gibbering unreadable mess, so every critique will be appreciated: critique on grammar, on style, on format, etc.
> 
> UPD 28-03: old text was edited and new text was addes in first chapter, so now it doesn't end cold turkey, but have a nice cute sense of wholeness, which, i heard, was important in chapters. Great thanks to all people who commented and helped!


End file.
